Current events

Writer Director Pan Nalin has signed on to direct "Buddha," the story of Siddhartha, for Barnet Bain Films. Shooting will start in the spring 07 in India and Nepal. Bain and Nalin are producing; Peter Russell and Tinker Lindsay co-produce. Nalin's first feature, 'Samsara,' was shot in the Tibetan language and has grossed more than $20 million worldwide. His new project, the more epic 'Valley of the Flowers,' a $6 million production filmed in Hindi and Japanese, will be released theatrically in about 30 countries early next year.

[edit] IBFF at the Rubin Museum of Art: Screenings in June Connected with The Missing Peace Exhibition

New York Premiere of Amongst White Clouds to Launch DVD Release

1 June 2007, Oakland The International Buddhist Film Festival (IBFF), in collaboration with New York's Rubin Museum of Art, presents a series of screenings of documentary films from IBFF's Festival Media distribution service. The screenings, part of the museum's Lunch Matters program, and connected with the museum's current The Missing Peace exhibition inspired by the Dalai Lama, will be shown at the museum every Wednesday in June at 1:00 pm. In addition, on Sunday, June 20, at 4:00 pm, the museum hosts the New York premiere of a new film made in China, Amongst White Clouds, with IBFF executive director Gaetano Kazuo Maida in attendance to moderate a post-screening discussion.

The full schedule is:

June 6, 1:00 pm - Destroyer of Illusion, by Richard Kohn, narrated by Richard Gere: unprecedented access and intimate knowledge inform this richly detailed and beautifully filmed portrait of a secret Tibetan Buddhist ritual, the Mani Rimdu festival, and Trulshik Rinpoche, the teacher who leads and protects it. Filmed on location in Nepal.

June 13, 1:00 pm - Compassion In Exile-The Story of the 14th Dalai Lama, by Mickey Lemle: a portrait of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the saga of the suffering of the Tibetan people under Chinese occupation. Filmed on location in India. Post-screening discussion moderated by director Mickey Lemle.

June 20, 1:00 pm - Peace Is Every Step, by Gaetano Kazuo Maida, narrated by Ben Kingsley: subtitled Meditation in Action-The Life and Work of Thich Nhat Hanh, this powerful study of the Vietnamese Zen teacher and activist details his efforts to heal the wounds of war among war (and peace) veterans and survivors. Filmed on location in the US and France. Post-screening discussion moderated by director Gaetano Kazuo Maida. [1]

June 24, 4:00 pm - NY Premiere of Amongst White Clouds-Chinese Masters of the Zhongnan Mountains, by Edward Burger: inspired in part by the noted book by Bill Porter, Road to Heaven: Encounters With Chinese Hermits, this is an intimate insider's look at students and masters living today in mountain hermitages in China. Filmed on location in China. Post-screening discussion moderated by IBFF executive director Gaetano Kazuo Maida.

June 27, 1:00 pm - The Lion's Roar, by Mark Elliott, written by Rick Fields and narrated by James Coburn: featuring rare footage of Tibetan masters Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Kalu Rinpoche, and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, this is the classic portrait of the late 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, known as the Black Hat Lama. Filmed on location in Sikkim and North America.

All the films will be projected from broadcast masters in the museum's lower level theater; admission charge is $10; RMA members free. For more information about tickets, hours and directions, visit www.rmanyc.org; for more information and trailers for the films, visit www.festivalmedia.org.

[edit] In the Classroom, a New Focus on Quieting the Mind

The New York Times

June 16, 2007 In the Classroom, a New Focus on Quieting the Mind By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

OAKLAND, Calif., June 12 - The lesson began with the striking of a Tibetan singing bowl to induce mindful awareness.

With the sound of their new school bell, the fifth graders at Piedmont Avenue Elementary School here closed their eyes and focused on their breathing, as they tried to imagine "loving kindness" on the playground.

"I was losing at baseball and I was about to throw a bat,"Â Alex Menton, 11, reported to his classmates the next day. "The mindfulness really helped."

As summer looms, students at dozens of schools across the country are trying hard to be in the present moment. This is what is known as mindfulness training, in which stress-reducing techniques drawn from Buddhist meditation are wedged between reading and spelling tests.

Mindfulness, while common in hospitals, corporations, professional sports and even prisons, is relatively new in the education of squirming children. But a small but growing number of schools in places like Oakland and [[Lancaster, Pa., are slowly embracing the concept - as they did yoga five years ago - and institutions, like the psychology department at Stanford University and the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, are trying to measure the effects.

During a five-week pilot program at Piedmont Avenue Elementary, Miss Megan, the "mindful" coach, visited every classroom twice a week, leading 15 minute sessions on how to have "gentle breaths and still bodies."Â The sound of the Tibetan bowl reverberated at the start and finish of each lesson.

The techniques, among them focused breathing and concentrating on a single object, are loosely adapted from the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, the molecular biologist who pioneered the secular use of mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts in 1979 to help medical patients cope with chronic pain, anxiety and depression. Susan Kaiser Greenland, the founder of the InnerKids Foundation, which trains schoolchildren and teachers in the Los Angeles area, calls mindfulness "the new ABC's - learning and leading a balanced life."

At Stanford, the psychology department is assessing the feasibility of teaching mindfulness to families. "Parents and teachers tell kids 100 times a day to pay attention,"Â said Philippe R. Goldin, a researcher. "But we never teach them how."

The experiment at Piedmont, whose student body is roughly 65 percent black, 18 percent Latino and includes a large number of immigrants, is financed by Park Day School, a nearby private school (prompting one teacher to grumble that it was "Cloud Nine-groovy-hippie-liberals bringing 'enlightenment' to inner city schools").

But Angela Haick, the principal of Piedmont Avenue, said she was inspired to try it after observing a class at a local middle school.

"If we can help children slow down and think,"Â Dr. Haick said, "they have the answers within themselves."

It seemed alternately loved and ignored, as students in Ms. Graham's fifth-grade class tried to pay attention to their breath, a calming technique that lasted 20 seconds. Then their coach asked them to "cultivate compassion" by reflecting on their emotions before lashing out at someone on the playground.

Tyran Williams defined mindfulness as "not hitting someone in the mouth."

"He doesn't know what to do with his energy," his mother, Towana Thomas, said at a session for parents. "But one day after school he told me, 'I'm taking a moment.' If it works in a child's mind - with so much going on - there must be something to it."Â

Asked their reactions to the sounds of the singing bowl, Yvette Solito, a third grader, wrote that it made her feel "calm, like something on Oprah." Her classmate Corey Jackson wrote that "it feels like when a bird cracks open its shell."

Dr. Amy Saltzman, a physician in Palo Alto, Calif., who started the Association for Mindfulness in Education three years ago, thinks of mindfulness education as "talk yoga."Â Practitioners tend to use sticky-mat buzzwords like "being present"Â and "cultivating compassion,"Â while avoiding anything spiritual.

Dr. Saltzman, co-director of the mindfulness study at Stanford, said the initial findings showed increased control of attention and "less negative internal chatter - what one girl described as 'the gossip inside my head: I'm stupid, I'm fat or I'm going to fail math,' "Â Dr. Saltzman said.

A recent study of teenagers by Kaiser Permanente in San Jose, Calif., found that meditation techniques helped improve mood disorders, depression, and self-harming behaviors like anorexia and bulimia.

Dr. Susan L. Smalley, a professor of psychiatry at U.C.L.A. and director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center there, which is studying the effects on schoolchildren, said one 4-year-old noticed her mother succumbing to road rage while stuck in traffic. "She said, 'Mommy, Mommy, you have to sing the breathing song,' " Dr. Smalley said.

Although some students take naturally to mindfulness, it is "not a magic bullet," said Diana Winston, the director of mindfulness education at the U.C.L.A. center. She said the research thus far was "inconclusive"Â about how effective mindfulness was for children who suffered from trauma-related disorders, for example. It is "a slow process," Ms. Winston added. "Just because kids sit and listen to the bell doesn't necessarily mean they'll be more kind."

Glenn Heuser, who teaches a combined fourth- and fifth-grade class at Piedmont, said one student started crying about a dead grandparent and another over melted lip balm. "It tapped into a very emotional space for them," Mr. Heuser said. "They struggled with, 'Is it O.K. to go there?' "

Although mindful education may seem like a New Yorker caricature of West Coast life, the school district with possibly the best experience has been Lancaster, Pa., where mindfulness is taught in 25 classes a week at eight schools. The district has a substantial poverty rate, with 75 percent of students qualifying for free lunch.

Midge Kinder, a yoga teacher, and her husband, Rick, started the program six years ago at George Ross Elementary, where their daughter Wynne taught.

Camille Hopkins, the principal, said initially she was skeptical. Growing up in South Philadelphia, "I was never told to take an elevator breath" - a way of breathing in stages, taught in yoga - "or hear the signals of chimes to cool down,"Â Ms. Hopkins said.

But the stresses today are greater, she conceded, particularly on students who lived with the threat of violence. "A lot of things we watched on TV are part of their everyday life," she said. "It's 'Did you know so-and-so got shot over the weekend.' "

In after-school detention, children are asked to "check in with their feelings,"Â Ms. Hopkins said. "How are you really changing behavior if they're just sitting there?"

Yolanda Steel, a second-grade teacher at Piedmont, said she was hopeful that the training would help an attention-deficit generation better manage a barrage of stimuli, including PlayStations and text messages. "American children are overstimulated," Ms. Steel said. "Some have difficulty even closing their eyes."

But she noted that some students tapped pencils and drummed on desks instead of closing their eyes and listening to the bell. "The premise is nice,"Â Ms. Steel concluded. "But mindfulness can't do it all." [2]

[edit] Burmese Protests

"Soldiers fired automatic weapons at protesters in Rangoon today, killing at least nine people in Burma's main city, reports said. The deaths came as thousands of demonstrators defied an increasingly violent government crackdown on public protests. State media reported that nine people had been killed and a further 11 injured." Guardian Unlimited

[edit] In This Farm Town, Gurus Transcend Party Politics Fairfield's Meditators

In This Farm Town, Gurus Transcend Party Politics Candidates Meet and Greet Fairfield's Meditators; Yogic Flyers Gather Tonight By CHRISTOPHER COOPER January 3, 2008; Page A1

FAIRFIELD, Iowa -- In the run-up to today's caucuses in Iowa, candidates have had to scrutinize the issues that move voters here. In this town, many care less about immigration than meditation.

"Are you familiar with Transcendental Meditation?" Craig Berg, a bearded man in a faded parka, said as he buttonholed Republican candidate Fred Thompson during a recent campaign stop here.

Candidates typically arrive here prepared for that question. The campaign of Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware has let it be known here that his former chief of staff is an adherent of Transcendental Meditation. During an outdoor rally here last summer, Sen. Barack Obama turned his podium east out of respect for the Transcendental Meditation view that east is the natural direction of energy flow.

Iowa is widely perceived as a homogenous state of meat-eating corn-growing white Protestants. But exceptions to the American Gothic stereotype abound, from the sushi halls of Iowa City and grape trellises of the Amana Colonies to the ultra-orthodox Jews from Brooklyn who run a kosher slaughterhouse in Postville. Here in Fairfield, about 1,700 residents gather each afternoon in a pair of gold domes for a session of group meditation known as Yogic Flying. [Ed Malloy]

Ahead of today's Iowa caucus, in which even a few dozen votes could tilt the race in many voting precincts, candidates have been making special pitches to demographics as small and eccentric as Fairfield's Transcendental Meditation community. Of this hamlet's 10,000 residents, barely a third of them are transcendental devotees. But their political influence is outsized. For the past six years the town has chosen as its mayor a Transcendental Meditation devotee named Ed Malloy. And for 12 years ending in 2004, Fairfield was home to a peace party, called the Natural Law Party, which hoped to elect a Transcendental Meditation practitioner as president.

Fairfield was a typical Iowa farming community until 1973, when the Maharishi University of Management purchased the bankrupt and discredited Parsons College, once dubbed "FlunkOut U" by a national magazine. Some locals regarded with skepticism the construction of two gold domes wherein Maharishi followers gathered daily for mass meditations. Natives lived uneasily with the outsiders, dubbing them "Rus" (pronounced "rooz") -- a shorthand for "Gurus.

But the election of Mr. Malloy, a silver-haired and personable oil broker transplanted from Long Island, helped ease those tensions. Also helpful was that the Maharishi high school began turning out scores of national merit scholars who played a role in turning Fairfield into "Silicorn Valley," as it became known around here, home to more than 40 software development and telecom companies.

For politicians, a challenge here is to respect the community's faith in Yogic Flying, or mass meditation. Derived from a combination of quantum physics and the proven benefits of meditation, Yogic Flying occurs each afternoon at 5 p.m. when about 1,700 adherents gather in the gold domes. Supporters say the number 1,700 roughly represents 1% of the nation's population divided by its square root. Supporters believe that when meditation is performed in groups, it confers benefits not only to its individual practitioners but to society at large.

On Mr. Thompson's drive into town, neither the Quantum Mechanic service station nor Utopia trailer park alerted him to the challenges ahead. And he was initially caught off guard by Mr. Berg's reference to Transcendental Meditation. [map]

Recovering quickly, however, Mr. Thompson managed to name the founder of Transcendental Meditation -- Maharishi Mahesh -- and praise its benefits. "Rested mind and body, huh?" he said. "I could have used that a year ago."

Politically, Fairfield leans left. It belongs to the only county in Iowa that in 2004 placed deep-blue candidate Howard Dean atop the Democratic field, just ahead of Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, whose vow to create a federal "Department of Peace" resonated with voters here.

Given those propensities, it's not surprising that barely a handful of supporters showed up to meet the bus of Republican hawk Mr. Thompson. But that doesn't mean Republicans aren't welcome here. The town square is host to several large billboards touting Republican pacifist Ron Paul, and many residents believe his Libertarian views will propel him to a win in this county in today's caucuses. Mayor Malloy and his wife even held a political open house last summer for Mr. Paul, prior to a large rally staged in the town.

But Mr. Paul, perhaps stung by allegations that his campaign has already attracted its share of political eccentrics, is making no to-do of his popularity here. Mr. Paul's deputy campaign manager, Joe Seehusen, carefully emphasizes that the congressman is only "politely intrigued by the Transcendental Meditation philosophy.

In response, Mayor Malloy -- who never actually endorsed Mr. Paul -- says, "Only about 50% of what he says resonates with me.

Democrats, having the most votes to gain here, are trying hardest to win them. In a community where factory hog farms are widely criticized as environmentally hazardous, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson took special pains to bone up on them before attending a town meeting here. "I'd regulate the hell out of them, Mr. Richardson vowed.

John Edwards visited the town this week, as did Mr. Richardson. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has scheduled -- and canceled -- three stops here, according to Mayor Malloy. The Clinton campaign didn't respond to a request for comment. [Go to campaign page]1 MORE

• Page One: Populist Message Gets Louder as Iowa Kicks Off Race2 • Washington Wire: Updates from the campaign trail3 • Complete Coverage: Campaign 20084

That seems to have helped Sen. Obama gain an edge. During his visit here last summer, Sen. Obama assured Mayor Malloy of the candidate's respect for Transcendental Meditation and the philosophy behind it. "He said he felt that if there was any candidate in the race to embrace this technique, he was that candidate, says Mayor Malloy.

The real Obama weapon, however, may be his wife, Michelle Obama. During a visit to Fairfield last month, she had several long conversations with the mayor's wife. "I think she and my wife are both very spiritual people, the mayor says.

Mrs. Obama's visit prompted the mayor to do something he'd never before done -- endorse a candidate. A few days after his introduction of Mrs. Obama at a Fairfield rally last week, Mayor Malloy publicly announced his endorsement of her husband. The winner of four consecutive elections, Mayor Malloy is influential throughout Fairfield.

Yet the mayor may need to push some of his fellow meditation adherents to vote at all. Mr. Berg, the bearded transcendentalist who confronted Mr. Thompson, says, "I doubt I'll caucus -- it comes right in the middle of our program."

By program, he means Yogic Flying. "It's absolutely essential because we're creating this power for the whole nation, Mr. Berg says. "It's vastly more important than the caucus.

But Mayor Malloy insists that no such conflict exists, because the caucus doesn't start until 6:30 p.m. "You can be in the domes on time and out by 6:30, says Mayor Malloy. "It's what I plan to do. You know, I respect Mr. Berg's priorities but it sounds like I'll need to give him a call.

Write to Christopher Cooper at christopher.cooper@wsj.com5

Retrieved from "http://www.dharmaflix.com/wiki/Current_events"

Current events

From DharmaflixWiki

Contents

[edit] Dharma Films A Cinematic Exploration of Buddhist Psychology

[edit] 3rd Annual Sun Valley Spiritual Film Festival

[edit] Pan Nalin to direct - 'Buddha'

[edit] IBFF at the Rubin Museum of Art: Screenings in June Connected with The Missing Peace Exhibition

[edit] In the Classroom, a New Focus on Quieting the Mind

[edit] Burmese Protests

[edit] In This Farm Town, Gurus Transcend Party Politics Fairfield's Meditators

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